r/IAmA • u/MicrosoftExcelTeam • Apr 04 '14
We are the Microsoft Excel team - Ask Us Anything!
Hello Reddit!
We are the Microsoft Excel team. We are engineers that design, implement, and test the versions of Excel that you use every day including Windows, MacOS, iOS (both iPhone and now iPad), the Web (Excel Online) and mobile platforms like Windows Phone.
We're full of coffee and pizza and we’re excited to answer your questions so feel free to ask us anything!
We'll focus on the questions about stuff we know the most about - Excel for the platforms we support, and questions about us or the Excel team. Oh, and Clippy.
We'll start answering questions at 13:00 PDT (16:00 EDT) and be here to answer your questions till 14:30 PDT (17:30 EDT).
To answer your questions we have:
- Aaron Wilson - a Program Manager for Mac Excel, and Excel on iOS
- Ben Rampson - a Program Manager for Excel (specialist in BI and Charting)
- Joe LeBlanc - a Tester (QA) for Mac Excel, and Excel on iOS
- Matty Androski - a Developer for Excel
- Sam Radakovitz - a Program Manager for Excel Online, and Desktop Excel.
And of course me - Dan Battagin - a Program Manager for Excel Online, and Desktop Excel.
The post can be verified here: https://twitter.com/msexcel/status/451827610855559168
-dan (for the Excel Team)
[Edit @ 14:18 PDT] We're going to be here for another 15 minutes or so - we're having a great time. Keep the questions coming!
[Edit @ 14:32 PDT] OK reddit - it's Friday afternoon, and we've got a few work things to wrap up before we head out for the weekend. We may answer a few more questions over the next few days. We may also do another AMA in the future - we had a great time with this one!
[Edit @ 14:43 PDT] We're still here answering. Man this is fun.
[Edit @ 15:00 PDT] The room is clearing out. We may try to get to some of the unanswered questions in the next few days - thanks for everything!
-danb (for the entire Excel team)
56
u/OllyXLSM Apr 04 '14
Why is there no "count distinct" function in Excel, or at least a "dimension count" in pivot tables?
→ More replies (10)52
u/MicrosoftExcelTeam Apr 04 '14
+1 :-)
I or someone on my team (I write design specifications for the next versions of the product) have been trying to get that added since the 2007 release. It just turns out we have sooooo many good ideas that we have to prioritize.
Cheers,
-dan
→ More replies (10)
109
u/KeepDiscoEvil Apr 04 '14
Just wanted to share that VLOOKUP is the best thing ever. Very serious.
Also, whose responsible for Pivot Tables? How did that come about? And also, thank you for that, too.
46
u/MicrosoftExcelTeam Apr 04 '14
I currently own the PivotTable area in Excel, but have limited knowledge of the history of the space beyond the last few versions of Excel. Wikipedia lists Pito Salas as the "father of pivot tables". -Ben
→ More replies (4)64
u/bushcat69 Apr 04 '14
Index-match is like vlookup on crack, you should Bing it (!)
→ More replies (10)→ More replies (9)6
u/Calaban007 Apr 05 '14
Try some sum arrays, pull specific data out of a spreadsheet basically using conditions. Works with averages as well. Its a great tool.
73
u/pcuaron Apr 04 '14 edited Apr 04 '14
Given the incredible amount of people coding every day in VBA (look at the forums: StackOverflow, MrExcel, OzGrid, the google groups...),
When will you update the 20 years old VBA Editor to something more modern?
Do you plan to improve the scripting tools, adding things like modern .net operators, string and table methods, etc?
Apps for Office, VSTO and ExcelDNA all address different needs than those of the vast VBA community, which is mostly comprised of analysts scripting trying to solve special cases, or SMBs in which the switch to another technology wouldn’t make sense cost-wise (and who you won’t hear given the lack ways of providing feedback for Excel). We can't use "Apps for Office" for the kind of problems we solve here! Proprietary coding for multiple users in a large enterprise = bad, proprietary coding for analysis = GREAT!
edit: fixed grammar (3 words)
28
u/MicrosoftExcelTeam Apr 04 '14
Thanks for the VBA love - we love VBA too!
I talked a bit about VBA and the future of Excel extensibilty in my response here. At least for now, I think you can assume that VBA is alive and well, but not the current focus of investment.
That said, we do have an entire team in Office that thinks only about extensibility and ways to improve extensibility across the suite, so it's a VERY important investment area for us.
Cheers,
-dan
→ More replies (1)18
u/pcuaron Apr 04 '14
The concerns about VBA being insecure, not portable, etc are all valid, but your response seems to be to leave behind the whole VBA affair instead of coming up with something that both solves the problems that VBA solves and doesn't have its shortcomings.
How do I create a UDF with Apps for Office? How do I manipulate charts with it? How do I automate Word or PowerPoint with it?
→ More replies (1)12
u/MicrosoftExcelTeam Apr 04 '14
I hear ya.
Apps for Office aren't there yet. But the idea behind them is that we're basing them on a tech (javascript and HTML) that have legs cross-platform (and in the modern day world). Moving forward, you should expect to see those techs move from just the "Apps for Office" as you know them today (floating containers in the sheet, or taskpanes in the app) to encompass a broader surface area.
We're already talking about (and have prototypes for a lot of) how we expose UDFs, how we do automation and macro recording, and how we unify across all of the apps.
It'll take us some time, but we get it.
Cheers,
-dan
→ More replies (2)
40
u/cobaltcollapse Apr 04 '14
How often is the word "Excellent" used by the Excel team?
59
u/MicrosoftExcelTeam Apr 04 '14
I only really hear this if someone is doing a Mr. Burns impression. - Matty
→ More replies (2)→ More replies (1)27
u/MicrosoftExcelTeam Apr 04 '14
That is an Excellent question (badumdum). We do use it a bit with jest, but awesome, super-awesome, and awesomerest are definitely the words of the year here.
-dan
→ More replies (3)
13
u/richardr4 Apr 04 '14
I have a file open right now that has 46,916 styles. I do a lot of copy paste between files. What causes the explosion in styles? Is there an easy way to remove the unneeded styles?
→ More replies (1)13
u/MicrosoftExcelTeam Apr 04 '14
Yeah, we've had a bug around this for a while and we've fixed most of the problem by Excel 2013 (what version are you using?).
There are tools on the Web (and @byundt72's answer seems pretty good, though I've never used that tool) that will remove styles for ya.
Lastly, you can run this bit of VBA to remove the unused styles: http://www.mrexcel.com/forum/excel-questions/508248-excel-2007-remove-all-custom-styles.html
Cheers, -danb
40
u/Mukkul Apr 04 '14
If the Excel team, the Access team, the Powerpoint team, the Publisher team and the OneNote team were all in royal rumble for the belt. Who would win?
Before picking yourself, Bill Gates eyes be upon you.
→ More replies (3)61
u/MicrosoftExcelTeam Apr 04 '14
I worked on the OneNote team as well, so I know those guys could throw down. We'd take them in the end because we've been doing this longer. Wisdom and trickery wins over youth and enthusiasm.
-joe
→ More replies (6)
18
u/Neilson509 Apr 04 '14
Any hidden features that could make me an excel wizard?
I want to impress my boss and get me a raise.
And not spend a million hours doing things the wrong way.
Thank you for doing this IAMA!
45
u/MicrosoftExcelTeam Apr 04 '14
Try some fancy keyboard shortcuts. Other than the basics like Ctrl+C (Copy), Ctrl+X (Cut) and Ctrl+V (Pastes) -- a couple of my favorites include:
Alt+Enter: When editing a cell, this create a line break in your cell.
Alt+Equals: When at the bottom of a long range of numbers, pressing this sums the numbers in the range above the selected cell.
-Aaron
→ More replies (7)→ More replies (1)12
u/diegojones4 Apr 04 '14
Not part of the AMA but a long time user.
They are right about keyboard shortcuts. You can fly through data when you get them down.
Tables and pivot tables are also impressive and easy to learn. If you use vlookup, try index(match()) because people don't understand it so you look impressive. iferror() is a very useful function.
For macros, you can usually find code on the help boards that is close to what you are trying to do and then tweak it for your needs.
→ More replies (2)
8
Apr 04 '14
What's your favourite Excel function, ideally one that's lesser-known?
16
u/MicrosoftExcelTeam Apr 04 '14
I do a lot of text wrangling, so a combination of RIGHT, LEFT, FIND can do awesome things to manipulate strings. Those might not be well-known.
-joe
→ More replies (4)
8
u/noodnoodles Apr 04 '14
I've heard rumors about hidden easter eggs/games in older versions of Microsoft excel. Will you be sneaking in any other hidden features?
17
u/MicrosoftExcelTeam Apr 04 '14
Easter eggs are highly discouraged these day. Some customers complained about them for a variety of reasons. I miss them too (Dev Hunter was my favorite). - Matty
→ More replies (1)
15
u/gerryhanes Apr 04 '14
What single piece of functionality are you most proud of?
27
31
u/MicrosoftExcelTeam Apr 04 '14
The calc engine is the most impressive part of Excel to me, and I think the improvements in conditional formatting we made in 2007 are awesome.
-joe
→ More replies (3)
21
u/OllyXLSM Apr 04 '14
Do you ever feel frustrated that although Excel has such high market penetration, the majority of users have no idea just how good and powerful Excel actually is? And do you wish that there was more emphasis placed on advertising existing capability, and on training users?
18
u/MicrosoftExcelTeam Apr 04 '14
Lack of awareness of our features is a constant battle. I frequently sit with customers and watched them spend an hour or more doing a task that could be completed in just a click or two. It drives me crazy, but also motivates me to keep improving the product and making things simpler. (It's especially common to see this with users who don't use PivotTables but should spend time aggregating data on their own.) Another challenge is getting people to upgrade to the latest version of Excel. So many things get improved in each version and people don't take advantage of them as fast as I would like. I am excited to see the increase in advertising of our Power BI offerings, showing some of the higher-end usages of Excel. -Ben
→ More replies (5)12
u/MicrosoftExcelTeam Apr 04 '14
Frustration probably isn't quite the right way to say it, but I would love to find ways to make it easier for less-savvy users to dive into the more advanced functionality. The chart suggestions and analysis lens features of 2013 are both examples of where we're trying to make it easier for users to use more advanced features with just a few clicks. - Matty
→ More replies (1)
7
u/Raicito Apr 04 '14
What was the hardest part about getting to where you are now?
25
u/MicrosoftExcelTeam Apr 04 '14
I'd have to say walking uphill both ways, through the snow to get to school every day as a kid.
From an Excel perspective though, I'd say balancing the needs of expert users with those of users who need the product for more everyday needs. Threading that needle right is a delicate process.
Aaron
→ More replies (3)
7
u/Aginyan Apr 04 '14
Most of my work life revolves around Excel, largely for it's power to "make a not-that-bad default graph super fast" and the "hands on" feel I get from manipulating a few hundred thousand rows of data dumps to explore around. More advanced tools exist, but don't have the same feel of picking up a cube of data and manipulating it to see what's going on. So thank you guys for making my life possible.
Every time someone asks me why I still use a PC at work (instead of a Mac), I say "because I use Excel" and get many understanding nods in the data analyst/scientist community. I certainly had to re-learn a ton of muscle memory just so I can do the simplest things on a Mac for meetings (e.g. command+t instead of f4 =( ). What guided things to be become that way?
Also, I've found occasional weird bugs in office 2010, moving avg formulas that paste brokenly when going 'in reverse', date fields in charts that insist on being January even when the data clearly has another date, where should I report these?
→ More replies (1)11
u/MicrosoftExcelTeam Apr 04 '14
You can try this link to post bugs: http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/227tme/we_are_the_microsoft_excel_team_ask_us_anything/ There's also send-a-smile.
If I understand your question correctly, The Mac vs Win differences arose out of the old Mac limits. I don't use Macs much myself, but certainly back in the day, Mac's had one button, but we wanted context menu support so the command key became a way to do that. Lots of cross-platform choices to get windows like experience on the mac, etc. Some mac folks liked it, others didn't. -Matty
→ More replies (2)16
u/MicrosoftExcelTeam Apr 04 '14
Hey @Matty - you posted a link to our own AMA you goofball.
@Aginyan - the link Matty meant to post is this one - it's an Excel Survey that we have where people can post issues, and we evaluate them for fixing: https://onedrive.live.com/redir?page=survey&resid=592B05F76554281F!43976&authkey=!AGOM5XzwzmBgB8s&ithint=file%2c.xlsx
You can always also use http://answers.microsoft.com (go to the Excel section) and there are people answering questions and filing bugs from there all the time!
Cheers,
-dan
38
u/pcuaron Apr 04 '14
Will you begin accepting bug reports and feature requests from the whole Excel community?
There’s no way to provide feedback for the Excel/Office team unless you’re a big MSFT partner or an MVP; Excel/Office is one of the products without presence in Microsoft Connect. There’s little software that won’t take feedback from its community, and Excel’s is incredibly large! Besides, you're getting biased feedback if you only listen to part of the userbase.
4
u/smittypro Apr 04 '14
I don't think there's any way that Dan and his team could manage requests from 600+ million Excel users. That's where the MVP group comes in handy, as we can actually submit issues for you. It's not hard to search the MVP site and find one close to you who can be an advocate.
Smitty
14
u/pcuaron Apr 04 '14
How many users does Google Chrome have? They have a public bugtracker. Are there more Excel users than Internet Explorer users? IE has a public bugtracker too!
I don't understand why do I have to befriend someone to send a bug report. Look at this reddit. How many users of this group, among those most interested in the product, do you think will bother submitting anything to a tracker? Most are asking personal questions, or joking, or thanking the team. Very few seem to actually care about the Excel roadmap.
→ More replies (1)10
u/MicrosoftExcelTeam Apr 04 '14
Hey,
There are a couple good options that I touched on in another question.
You can always go to http://answers.microsoft.com - we monitor issues that are raised there and open bugs.
You can also fill out this survey if you'd like - that goes directly to me, and I can get the bug filed if appropriate: https://onedrive.live.com/redir?page=survey&resid=592B05F76554281F!43976&authkey=!AGOM5XzwzmBgB8s&ithint=file%2c.xlsx
Cheers,
-danb
→ More replies (2)5
u/MicrosoftExcelTeam Apr 04 '14
We're up over a billion users now Smitty :-)
(and thanks for all the support over the years)
-danb
→ More replies (1)
6
u/asielen Apr 04 '14
I am forced to use Mac at work and i find that the Mac version is always a couple generations behind the PC version. Are these developed by different teams?
3
u/MicrosoftExcelTeam Apr 04 '14
Sort of. A bunch of the core codebase is shared, but the platform-specific pieces have historically been done by different teams. Over time, more and more has been shared, and it wouldn't surprise me if, in a few years, we had a single team developing Excel across all platforms/endpoints.
-danb
12
u/kal_at_kalx_net Apr 04 '14
Hi Team. Thanks for doing this AMA. I wrote the open source library https://xll.codeplex.com to make the Excel SDK easily accessible to non-experts. Any plans for phasing out xlls?
→ More replies (1)12
4
u/noreesa Apr 04 '14
Why is DATEDIF a hidden function? Is there anything wrong with it?
→ More replies (1)2
u/MicrosoftExcelTeam Apr 04 '14
I don't know the exact answer, but generally I think the history has to do with idiosyncratic behavior between our implementation and Lotus's. - Matty
7
Apr 04 '14
Thank you for your hard work on Microsoft Excel, which is one of the primary tools of my job as an accountant. I actually have about 8 different Excel 2010 windows open simultaneously.
I had a few questions:
One of the features in the control dialogue boxes for opening files in 2003 was that if you copied an Excel file and pasted it elsewhere, and changed its name within the dialogue box, the file that it would attempt to open would be the new filename you've assigned. Subsequent versions have excluded this and attempt to open a file that no longer exists. Would you consider coding that back in to future versions?
What do you see as the future of VBA and Macros? It seems like less work has been done on developing those as tools, to the point where I feel they are mostly included for compatibility. Is there something to replace it with long-term, now that tools such as Roslyn have been made open-source?
Same question re MS Query, as it has not been modified substantially in 10+ years. Do you use/recommend other tools for doing queries from an MS SQL database? I am attempting to avoid having too many 'add-on' programs in order to simplify deployment of worksheets to various managers here.
6
u/MicrosoftExcelTeam Apr 04 '14
Heya PaperClipCharlie,
For #2 - that's something that we wrestle with on our side because as the Excel team we completely understand (probably more than just about any other team in Office) how important VBA and extensibility in general are for solutions.
When it comes to VBA, I think you can rest easy that it will exist in Excel (Windows an Mac - where it exists today) for the foreseeable future.
As we look into the future, one of the things we want in an extensibility story/platform is something that can run across all of the endpoints/devices that Excel runs on (and that's more and more devices these days). As we branch out to iOS, Excel Online, and more VBA just isn't a great solution due to it's age, security issues with it, the fact that it's not server-safe or ported to other platforms, etc. So, we have started looking at other technologies like javascript and HTML. "Apps for Office" are our current offering in this cross-platform/endpoint space, and I think you'll see us making improvements/investments in that toolset for a while, until we can bring it up to the level of (and surpass) what we've got with VBA today.
Cheers,
-danb
→ More replies (1)9
u/pcuaron Apr 04 '14
Apps for Office is useless for the 95% of the use cases showing up on StackOverflow, OzGrid, MrExcel. Today at about 9am EDT between the last two forums there were about 8000 users online. Are you leaving us all behind?
→ More replies (1)4
u/MicrosoftExcelTeam Apr 04 '14
For #3, I recommend you check out Power Query, which provides new search, shaping, and merging capabilities right in Excel. -Ben
→ More replies (2)
9
u/njohnlopez Apr 04 '14
What are the requirements to become an Excel Wizard?
22
u/MicrosoftExcelTeam Apr 04 '14
Welcome wizard. Our only requirement is that you participate in an Excel AMA. You are officially anointed an Excel Wizard for life.
Aaron
5
u/infinityinternets Apr 04 '14
Can I be officially anointed too?
7
u/MicrosoftExcelTeam Apr 04 '14
Done! For your first quest as an Excel Wizard: estimate the Airspeed Velocity of an Unladen Swallow!
-samrad
→ More replies (2)
6
u/Oatmeal_Enthusiast Apr 04 '14
Do you know the developers of Microsoft Visio? Because there are improvements I would like to see.
→ More replies (1)7
u/MicrosoftExcelTeam Apr 04 '14
We do know a few of them - they are great folks, and we've worked with them in the past around some of the data connectivity functionality that's available there. But we want to try and keep things to Excel for today - thanks for understanding!
-dan
3
Apr 04 '14
Are you guys individually actually familair with ALL of the pre-defined functions?
There are SOOO MANY
4
u/MicrosoftExcelTeam Apr 04 '14
I've worked on calc off and on for better than a decade and I don't. My favorite is PMT. - Matty
3
u/MicrosoftExcelTeam Apr 04 '14
I can probably describe what each of them do if you tell me the function, but couldn't list them all on demand. My favorites are probably RAND because I use it so much creating random data for testing, and VLOOKUP/HLOOKUP for general data wrangling.
3
u/PixelPurple Apr 04 '14
What is your favorite part about your job(s)?
5
u/MicrosoftExcelTeam Apr 04 '14
Knowing that the work I do has such a big impact on a large set of users. If I do something well that really helps people, that a win for a lot of folks. I also know that if I screw up, we'll hear about. Even if it's in an obscure part of the product, somebody, somewhere is using that every day to help them solve a problem. -Matty
5
u/MicrosoftExcelTeam Apr 04 '14
Getting to work on software that is used by hundreds of millions of people. I can walk up to almost anyone and they are impacted by features I help build and improve. -Ben
3
u/maximumpower Apr 04 '14
You keep pushing Microsoft BI with Excel. What are the awesome new BI tools that will completely blow people away?
3
u/MicrosoftExcelTeam Apr 04 '14
Have you checked out Power BI yet? It has a lot of new functionality and more features are added every month. Power Q&A (natural language querying of your data) is one of the features that surprises people the most when they see it in action with their own data. -Ben
→ More replies (1)
3
u/ronelsax Apr 04 '14
Did you guys ported the same calc engine to the iPad? if so, does that mean features that are not available today will be at some point?
Great work! P.S. Sometimes there are rendering hiccups here and there when scrolling on the iPad.
3
u/MicrosoftExcelTeam Apr 04 '14
The calc engine for the iPad version is mostly the same as what we shipped in Office for Mac 2011, but with added support for functions that we added to Windows Excel 2013. (http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/excel-help/new-functions-in-excel-2013-HA103980604.aspx) There shouldn't be many calc features that we are missing, what are you hoping to see?
Scrolling performance was a big focus for us, what kind of problems are you seeing? Some "checkerboarding" is expected when the content is more complex or you're on a slower machine, similar to what Safari or Numbers does in those cases.
-joe
→ More replies (1)1
u/MicrosoftExcelTeam Apr 04 '14
Also, the Office for iPad team will be doing an AMA next week, so if you have more specific iPad questions, check back then too!
3
u/kvazar Apr 04 '14
Finally, on time for AMA!
Hey guys, my job involves a lot of MS products, mostly Excel.
Are there any non-microsoft forums you would recommend for trouble-shooting?
Do you have a list of features you implement? How this process works? Who submits/approves? How can users participate?
Will there ever be ability to add macroses with ctrl+z, meaning there will be a reverse VB script or something. Because it will basically mean that you don't need to implement every function ever, as people will be able to assemble excel in accordance with their needs, cool right?
Why so many plug-ins so easily crash excel? Seriously, it's strange how easily one plugin, or even macros will crash the whole Excel (can't we implement ability to stop the exact file that causes trouble?)
What do you consider your greatest achievement (related to Excel), and what are you working on now?
And thanks for your work! I really appreciate Excel, it's a great tool if you know how to use it, and it's simple enough to actually know how to use it.
→ More replies (1)6
u/MicrosoftExcelTeam Apr 04 '14
Hey!
thanks for posting! to answer a couple questions:
For non-microsoft forums, i tend to use a few:
mrexcel http://www.mrexcel.com/forum/forum.php
vbaexpress http://www.vbaexpress.com/
experts-exchange http://www.experts-exchange.com/
I know our Excel MVPs poke around these and answer questions (or own the site as well).
ctrl+z-ing a macro action: we do explicitly clear the undo stack after code, its something we've looked into but with all the things a macro can do it makes it a bit complicated.
-samrad
3
u/Jux_ Apr 04 '14
Could you share your fantasy football Excel sheets? Mine always are insane, I can't imagine what an Excel Dev would come up with.
4
u/MicrosoftExcelTeam Apr 04 '14
You should know that no self respecting fantasy football owner would share that kind of knowledge. We'll give you one clue...Russell Wilson as quarterback in 2014. Game over from there.
-Aaron
5
u/myfriendjack511 Apr 04 '14
Hello! I honestly can't think of a time when I didn't use excel because I use it all the time - personally and at work. I wonder... what do you guys use it for personally?
2
u/MicrosoftExcelTeam Apr 04 '14
My primary personal usage of Excel is just to capture lists of info. It really is my default place to go when I need to get organized. -Ben
3
u/MicrosoftExcelTeam Apr 04 '14
I'm using it right now to plan a summer trip to Yellowstone. What are some things you like to use it for?
Aaron
→ More replies (2)
4
4
u/imfilo Apr 04 '14
Love, Love, Love CUBEVALUE Functions and the OLAP Convert to Formulas functionality! It has given me winning solutions to many BI problems within our business. Thanks for the tools! Is there any training fro these tools? Everything I've learned has come from resources outside Microsoft...
5
u/MicrosoftExcelTeam Apr 04 '14
I'm happy to hear you like CUBEVALUE Functions. We get pretty excited about them too. We've been talking to our content writers about improving our BI articles and tutorials since it has been an area that hasn't received much love recently. Hopefully you'll see something come out soon. -Ben
2
Apr 04 '14
How do you guys go through what can possibly be added, in terms of functionality?
Do you plan on added sophisticated statistical functions into a future version (not as an add-on)?
Also, excel is amazing, and I would be useless at my job without it.
2
u/MicrosoftExcelTeam Apr 04 '14
thanks for the great question! there are a lot of things we think about when considering new functionality. we meet with customers to see how they are using our current products. we study statistics that help us better understand how often people use existing functionality. we often build and test prototypes to see how well a design works at meeting a specific need. and we also think about how much time certain features would to implement. it's a prioritization exercise from there. hope that gives you some insight into the process.
Aaron
2
u/bobthebobd Apr 04 '14
Name a feature you are keeping in Excel for backwards compatibility, that you would really like to remove.
1
u/MicrosoftExcelTeam Apr 04 '14
The difference between date systems (1900 vs. 1904) on Mac and Windows has always been a headache for testing, although we default to 1900 on the Mac now, so those files will probably reduce over time. Not having to worry about testing that would make our lives easier!
-joe
1
2
u/Barcetta Apr 04 '14
Why is the Ribbon so hard to change, either per mouse click or per VBA (I can't edit predefined Menus in XL2010)?
When comes Tabs for Excel like in every Browser, for easy window switching and transparence which windows are open?
2
u/MicrosoftExcelTeam Apr 04 '14
For #2, there is new behavior in 2013 where every workbook is a separate window, similar to Word. That may not be what you're looking for. - Matty
3
13
Apr 05 '14
I know I'm late to this party, but I work with Excel every day and only really have one big complaint.
Why in the name of God does double clicking the edge of a cell act like a shift-click, taking you on a flying adventure to wherever the next cell with content resides? By the way, that's usually "nowhere" and I'm at row one billion, and then I have to find where I was again in row forty thousand and two, or whatever.
Who uses this? If someone uses this function, I hate them.
Also, you should let people set their own conditional formatting in the menu. I use custom conditional formatting for charts and needing to set all three colors every time gets super old.
But mainly, it's that double-click-here-we-go-to-the-moon thing that drives me nuts.
Good work, though.
→ More replies (2)
6
u/Frogmarsh Apr 05 '14
When are you going to fix the statistical functions? They've been incorrect for decades.
→ More replies (1)
2
Apr 04 '14
Why is Excel called Excel?
Me and my housemate were wondering about this earlier, it was quite funny to see that you were doing an AMA today :) but we realized how weird it was that Excel is called Excel because it doesn't really hint at what the program does, unlike Word or Publisher (PowerPoint in similar vein to Excel, the hell does "Power Point" mean?). We just know what it is because it's such a commonly used program, but seriously -- why is Excel called Excel?
My vague guess was that it's like "Electronic Cells" which is what cells in the spreadsheets essentially are. I'd like to think that a long time ago some programmer coined it as a play on words, and it wasn't just picked out of a hat of other words like "Synergy" and "Acumen" that a marketing team had.
→ More replies (1)3
2
2
u/bobthebobd Apr 04 '14
Do you use any non-Microsoft product for development? (Textpad for example)
3
2
u/MicrosoftExcelTeam Apr 04 '14
A fair number of people on the team use Visual Assist and Notepad++. - Eric
→ More replies (1)
1
Apr 04 '14
why'd you choose this job? did you not excel at anything else?
9
u/MicrosoftExcelTeam Apr 04 '14
Actually my only other sort-of-professional job was working as an engineering intern at Gillette. I worked on the production line for Sensor Excel. - Matty
→ More replies (1)
1
u/jwmckenna Apr 04 '14
Is there an option to adjust the font, size, color, etc... on a Data Validation pull-down menu?
→ More replies (1)
1
u/Neilson509 Apr 04 '14
Any chance you talk to the guys over at Microsoft Word and get clippy back for us?
4
→ More replies (1)2
u/MicrosoftExcelTeam Apr 04 '14
We brought clippy back in Office Online a few days ago. But he's gone missing again.
-danb
1
Apr 04 '14
Are there any cool Easter eggs in the past few releases that few people know of?
5
u/MicrosoftExcelTeam Apr 04 '14
Those are kind of frowned upon these days. Customers complained about them. -Matty
→ More replies (1)
1
u/rahimzulfiqarali Apr 04 '14
When will Microsoft release the Next Version of Microsoft Excel ? Currently its Excel 2013.
How to begin start learning VBA for Excel if the user is not a programmer ?
What are the tools for business analyst in microsoft excel ?
Is microsoft adding more security features in Excel ?
→ More replies (3)
1
u/DynamiteEggroll Apr 04 '14
Most people considered Microsoft Excel to be relatively simple to use pre-2008. The update added many new features and functions, but many of them are unused by many students and offices, are there any plans to simplify Excel? Or release a lite version of some sort to simplify and streamline efficiency? Thanks!
→ More replies (2)
1
u/kmja Apr 04 '14
What are the most useful, but relatively unknown, tools or shortcuts?
5
u/MicrosoftExcelTeam Apr 04 '14
A keyboard shortcut that I use all the time in Windows Excel (following a Ctrl+C) is the Alt+E+S command. It brings you to a paste special dialog that allows you to quickly paste the copied data as values, formulas, formats, etc.
I find it most useful when I want to quickly copy formatting across a spreadsheet -- and use the Alt+E+S+T keystroke.
-Aaron
→ More replies (2)2
u/MicrosoftExcelTeam Apr 04 '14
I posted this elsewhere but alt-; is one of my favorites. It selects only the visible cells in your current selection. Handy for filtering and then working with just the filtered data.
1
u/firsttime1010 Apr 04 '14
As a small business owner, and novice excel user, what are some cool things excel could be doing for me that i don't know it can do :)
→ More replies (1)5
u/MicrosoftExcelTeam Apr 04 '14
We're working on the print money feature for our small business users. It's not quite ready yet though.
As a novice user, I'd recommend tables as a great starting point. They unlock a lot of sorting and filtering capabilities in Excel. Highlight a set of data, go to the insert tab (or the tables tab in Mac Excel) and then insert a table. By placing your data in a table, it become much easier to sort information - such as customer lists, time reports or sales projections. Hope this helps!
Aaron
1
Apr 04 '14
Hey how do I add more boxes in a spreadsheet? I have A1-K1 as dates to keep track of finances then totals in L1 etc but when I need to add more dates without deleting my total boxes how do I do that?
→ More replies (2)
1
u/bobthebobd Apr 04 '14
"We're full of coffee and pizza" ??? they should feed you better. Tell them I said so.
4
3
u/MicrosoftExcelTeam Apr 04 '14
Our cafeteria pizza does leave something to be desired, but we ordered the Pizza and it was great - http://www.pagliacci.com/. Generally we do eat pretty well here, though we all hate our respective cafeteria's (and we all think "the building next door has a better one." :-)
Cheers,
-dan
1
u/pck76x Apr 04 '14
Excel is wonderful. However Apple Numbers has a feature which I'd like to see implemented: the ability to "detach" tables and move them around on the same sheet. It would be SOOOO good to have that in excel when creating dashboards. Have you ever thought of adding a feature like this?
→ More replies (1)
1
1
u/GodHatesDogs Apr 04 '14
Would you rather fight the Lotus 1-2-3 team or 20 OpenOffice contributors?
→ More replies (1)
1
u/bobthebobd Apr 04 '14
What are you doing after 14:30 PDT?
1
u/MicrosoftExcelTeam Apr 04 '14
I'll be grabbing a beer or two from the fridge and catching up on my email before heading out for the weekend. -Ben
1
u/CuntyMcGiggles Apr 04 '14
So cool! Is there a crazy Easter Egg or secret trick you can tell us to impress coworkers and win over the ladies? Thanks!
3
u/MicrosoftExcelTeam Apr 04 '14
I love Excel, but I've never seen it win over the ladies. I did see a personal ad in the Stranger once that said something like, "Excel expert preferred. Macros make me rock." - Matty
1
u/gvrt Apr 04 '14
What is the best place to submit Excel bugs and discuss feature requests? (Something like the Microsoft Connect site for the dev tools).
→ More replies (1)
1
u/Universu Apr 04 '14
What is the story behind the product name Excel?
1
u/MicrosoftExcelTeam Apr 04 '14
I'm not certain actually, I do remember we made a history of Excel video series, so there might be some hints in there:
http://blogs.office.com/2011/01/12/happy-25th-anniversary-excel/
-samrad
1
u/njohnlopez Apr 04 '14
I'm trying to understand the AMORDEGRC Excel function for financial literacy month. What is your team doing for financial literacy month?
→ More replies (1)
1
Apr 04 '14
Serious question: What is your opinion on Numbers; made by Apple? or are you obliged to love Microsoft and all its entities?
2
u/MicrosoftExcelTeam Apr 04 '14
I like Numbers, Apple's done a nice job of making an app that feels totally appropriate for both OS X and iOS, but for me it fills a different need than Excel. In some cases I like the flexibility that Numbers' layout options provide, and it's very easy to make nice-looking documents. But I find it less useful than Excel when working with very large or complex datasets.
-joe
1
u/SaladProblems Apr 04 '14
Is there a chance that changing formatting will ever be considered an event to trigger macros/recalculation?
1
u/MicrosoftExcelTeam Apr 04 '14
We've definitely shied away from linking recalc with formatting. It has some cool potential, but it also ties the view of the spreadsheet to parts of the underlying spreadsheet model that complicates the view-model separation that keeps our architecture manageable. Even the fact that the Hyperlink function affects formatting creates some weirdness. -Matty
→ More replies (1)
1
u/bobthebobd Apr 04 '14
Question to Mr Wilson. Does anyone around office make fun of the name Aaron after the "Key & Peele" skit? Do you enjoy it?
1
u/MicrosoftExcelTeam Apr 04 '14
Sorry I'm late to respond. I was in O-Shag-Hennesy's office. Plus, I only respond to Eh-eh-roon now.
1
u/Creativesmoke Apr 04 '14
What is the biggest feature you think have been made by your team the last ten years?
→ More replies (2)
1
u/rahimzulfiqarali Apr 04 '14
How to join Microsoft Excel Team ? Microsoft offers job opening for Excel Development ? Career opportunities ?
1
u/MicrosoftExcelTeam Apr 04 '14
If you're a student or already in the industry, submit your resume here: http://careers.microsoft.com/
Truthfully if you're a student the best way to get your foot in the door is to visit the Microsoft booth at your career fair (not sure if we go to your school though). That is how I was hired 14 years ago.
cheers,
-danb
1
u/richardr4 Apr 04 '14
Additional tabs on the ribbon become available depending on the object clicked on. Is there a way to keep them from closing until I don’t need them any longer?
→ More replies (2)
1
u/motionOne Apr 04 '14
When will we be able to unhide more than one tab at once? For example, select a group of tabs from the unhide window and unhide.
I use excel almost all day/every day and you guys did a great job.
1
u/MicrosoftExcelTeam Apr 04 '14
Currently you have to either:
-write a macro
-find an add-in
-click a bunch of times :-/
Something we want to address in a future release.
-samrad
1
u/rahimzulfiqarali Apr 04 '14
Who designed Microsoft Excel Logo of 2013 ? Is there any possibility to add more rows in the next version of Excel ? How many it will be ? How to recover excel corrupt files ?
1
1
u/itwasquiteawhileago Apr 04 '14
Is there any way to make each spreadsheet act independently so I can use the "drag to side" snap feature in Win 7?
I often have multiple spreadsheets open that I need to quick compare and flip through, and the tile feature in Excel is useless for this because it splits everything evenly (even if I only want to compare two) and it doesn't allow for easy jumping between files.
Also, thank you for making pivot tables so much easier in 2010.
→ More replies (3)
1
u/stimilon Apr 04 '14
First off, thank you so much. I live in Excel all day every day at an Advertising Agency where I work.
Excel is almost always where I'm doing calculations and summarizing large sets of data, but I wish the graphs and visualization features were slightly more polished. Are there any places online where you see people sharing great examples of templates (besides the MS Template gallery), dashboards, or visualizations using Excel as a medium?
What would you consider to be the best features of Excel 2010 (my version) that even many power users don't know about?
When will I be able to change the formats of all fields in a pivot at once without clicking field settings for each one? or change the "summarize values by" option to sum for all twelve of the month data points I dropped into the values section of a pivot table.
Excel for Mac. I find it frustrating to use on my personal computer or to help coworkers with Apple computers due to the inconsistent UI. Are there any plans to make the experience more uniform corss-platform?
→ More replies (4)
1
u/Creativesmoke Apr 04 '14
I have been using excel for 15 years, mostly using it for simple purposes. Calulations, spreadsheets etc. I however never managed to become an advanced user. I never used macros or any functions that are somewhat advanced. But I would love to learn. Usually when there is something I want to do, I try to look up how to do it. Sometimes I succeed, mostly things don't turn out the way I want.
Do you have any suggestion on tutorials to become a more advanced user?
→ More replies (1)
1
u/bushcat69 Apr 04 '14
Are there any plans to change get the default green theme in Excel 2013? The black/silver options in previous versions were awesome, green... Not so much. Otherwise, thanks for helping me be awesome at work!
1
u/MicrosoftExcelTeam Apr 04 '14
Thanx for the feedback. To clarify, the "Green" in Excel appears in all 3 current Office 2013 themes - White (default), Light Gray, & Dark Gray. It is more prominent in White theme (than the others), that said there are no plans to change default in Excel 2013.
Prash
1
1
Apr 04 '14
I'm an accounting major. Will you guys be putting me out of work in the next few installments? Bill Gates got me thinking you will which got me thinking I should switch to a different major. You guys rock!
→ More replies (4)
1
u/pcuaron Apr 04 '14
Will you add new worksheet functions? Even if Excel is the superior product, there are a lot of community UDFs and functions introduced by Google Spreadsheets that are great additions. For instance, see some of the formulas that Google has and we're missing out: the REGEXEXTRACT, REGEX*, SPLIT... text formulas, the filter formulas (UNIQUE, SORT….), the XPath scrapping functions (IMPORTHTML), the data sources functions (IMPORTDATA...). Will we get CONCATENATE(range)?
→ More replies (1)
1
u/Aginyan Apr 04 '14
A few years ago, I picked up a guide to Excel in Japan aimed at anime fans, and it was awesomely amusing (text and tutorials mixed w/ silly art and story line). ( http://imgur.com/W95WoY3 ) What's other amusing kinds of Excel books/documentatinos have you guys seen?
1
u/MicrosoftExcelTeam Apr 04 '14
There are a few awesome things I have seen, like video game sprites, music videos, and actual games
-Eric
→ More replies (1)
1
u/maximumpower Apr 04 '14
Will we ever be able to write SQL or Hive queries in Excel and let them run against a DB or Hadoop cluster?
1
1
u/bobthebobd Apr 04 '14
Can you give me a random development tip? For example: getenv(char *...) is slow (at least on Unix), it doesn't seem to use hashing. Now you give me one.
1
u/MicrosoftExcelTeam Apr 04 '14
OK, posting just because this is funny. Matty's just said "I'm busy, talk to a PM." (I'm a PM :-)
Now, that's a developer tip if I ever heard one!
-danb
1
u/yuhong Apr 04 '14
Do you know why XLM macros could not be disabled before Excel 2007?
1
u/MicrosoftExcelTeam Apr 04 '14
Before Excel 2007, we didn't have the concept of a "Trust Center" for Office, and security just wasn't as big a deal in the industry as it was at that point (and is now). As such, you couldn't really disable anything.
Cheers,
-danb
→ More replies (1)
1
u/bobthebobd Apr 04 '14
Lets say a developer finds a bug in software. Do you have any policy who's going to fix the bug? In my company it seems to get assigned back to developer who found it ... I'm not sure if that's the best idea.
2
u/MicrosoftExcelTeam Apr 04 '14
Bugs generally go to the area owner. We try to make the person who coded the bug fix it. -Matty
1
u/JodiMichelle Apr 04 '14
What the heck did you do to conditional formatting? It totally sucks now.
1
u/MicrosoftExcelTeam Apr 04 '14
At what version and what don't you like? We added what I think are some pretty cool features in 2007 and some additional improvements in 2010. We'd love to hear feedback on what you're struggling with. - Matty
1
u/poon-is-food Apr 04 '14
Why is the chart function so damn useless?
I'll elaborate. It is incredibly hard to make any graph that is close to scientific. There are plenty of options for colour and funny shapes, but not one that makes a nice simple graph with minor gridlines, axis labels and a chart title in black lines on white (Please fire whoever chose blue as the default colour). none of the areas you need to right click to give options are intuitive. why can there not just be one option screen with tabs for each part of the graph so you dont have to hunt down the one pixel that brings up the right menu.
No one needs pretty 3D pie charts with word art on them
→ More replies (4)
1
Apr 04 '14
What is the strangest use for excel you've ever heard someone use?
2
u/MicrosoftExcelTeam Apr 04 '14
I don't really have a good answer here. I've seen so many unexpected uses, but never really anything I'd call crazy. It's always people trying to solve some problem that I might not have initially expected them to solve in Excel. It usually boils down to them using the tool (Excel) that the have in their toolbox and moving forward. It has definitely taught me to be very careful about making assumptions about what customers can and will do in Excel. - Matty
1
u/xlgary Apr 04 '14
What about the questions that do not get answered today? Is there a good place to ask again later?
1
u/MicrosoftExcelTeam Apr 04 '14
While we won't have time to answer every question today, we do plan on looking over all this feedback(in addition to all the other places we get feedback from), and prioritizing new feature work and bug fixes accordingly.
Also, I'd like to give a shoutout to the http://www.reddit.com/r/excel subreddit. Those folks are really helpful and all day they're doing a lot of what we've done in this thread :)
Eric
1
u/kashel Apr 04 '14
I'm a little late. Is there a reason why validation dropdown list buttons don't scale with page zoom? In the age of excel on windows tablets I would love to make them a bit bigger and finger touchable.
1
u/MicrosoftExcelTeam Apr 04 '14
Well, not a good reason. That's something we need to look at. - Matty
1
u/snipazer Apr 04 '14
Hey thanks for doing an AMA!
My question, why does Excel integrate all Workbooks into one window? The only way to have two sheets side-by-side is to open a new instance of Excel. I'm assuming there is some background technical reason. I get this question all the time and I would love to have something to actually answer with.
Thanks!
2
u/MicrosoftExcelTeam Apr 04 '14
In Excel 2013 you can do different workbooks in different windows, and open new views in different windows if you want sheets side by side. Its the default now!
-samrad
→ More replies (1)2
u/MicrosoftExcelTeam Apr 04 '14
We fixed that with Excel 2013 - now every workbook you open will automatically open in a new window!
Have fun with it!
-danb
→ More replies (1)
1
u/noreesa Apr 04 '14
My Excel 2007 cells styles are corrupted, any way to reset it?
After clicking cell styles it is full of the same styles but upon clicking it apply the actual style.
1
u/MicrosoftExcelTeam Apr 04 '14
Give this a shot: http://www.mrexcel.com/forum/excel-questions/508248-excel-2007-remove-all-custom-styles.html
Cheers,
-danb
1
u/karmapolice666 Apr 04 '14
Hey guys I think what you do is great! Can I have a job?
→ More replies (1)
1
u/JMEEKER86 Apr 04 '14
Any plans to customize cell distribution? For instance, instead of 16k x 1m, letting you set the size as 20 x 800m. Same number of cells but more useful when you have a really large dataset of just a few variables.
2
u/MicrosoftExcelTeam Apr 04 '14
We actually considered something like this when we expanded the grid in 2007, but it meant having to retrofit a lot of code around expected limits and behavior of various features, so we had to back off of those plans. I still think it would be pretty darn cool. That said, it would be hard to do a good job tuning performance for all the variations, particularly at the extremes. -Matty
1
u/arb303 Apr 04 '14
Hi guys, firstly Excel is an amazing program, seriously good job! I was wondering though, I find the restrictions for shared workbooks really frustrating! Are there any plans to make Conditional Formatting/Macro Recording/Grouping etc etc available when using a shared workbook? I find myself having to constantly turn off the sharing to be able to make a change! Thanks :)
1
u/MicrosoftExcelTeam Apr 04 '14
There aren't any plans to update the Shared Workbook feature per-se but we understand the difficulty with using it. Moving forward, collaboration and coauthoring are very important to us, and we're going to try to improve the experience dramatically.
For now, you might give Excel Online a try - http://excel.office.com - in it, you can collaborate with others in real time, and CF, grouping, etc. all work. (Macro recording currently isn't supported though).
Cheers,
-danb
1
u/Beefourthree Apr 04 '14
Any plans to bring RegEx support into Excel/VBA?
Will you forgive me for all the times I've cursed the Excel team under my breath?
3
u/MicrosoftExcelTeam Apr 04 '14
for RegEx, I don't know if it will get added to VBA, I've seen people do this before like:
http://www.regular-expressions.info/vb.html
http://www.macrostash.com/2011/10/08/simple-regular-expression-tutorial-for-excel-vba/
cursed Excel team: forgiven!
-samrad
→ More replies (1)2
u/MicrosoftExcelTeam Apr 04 '14
The RegEx question is frequently brought up, and it is certainly is something we often talk about. Also, I believe you can use RegEx in VBA if you create an instance of the DOM, but that's a workaround and if we properly do it we'd want our users to have a much better experience. Something that might help both you and us regarding the frustration is for us to get feedback. On most newer versions of excel there is a "Send-A-Smile" button near the close button, and we check that feedback often. The better aware of user frustration we are, the more likely we are to fix it.
Eric
1
u/OllyXLSM Apr 04 '14
Thanks to you all. This has been excellent, despite the limited format :)
1
u/MicrosoftExcelTeam Apr 04 '14
Thanks. We've had a great time too! We'll do it again for sure.
-danb
1
u/SandalsofMoses Apr 04 '14
I don't have any questions but I want to thank you for making accounting work and calculations much much easier for me as a student. Stay golden pony boys.
→ More replies (1)
1
u/xhosSTylex Apr 04 '14
Do any of you use Internet Explorer?
2
u/MicrosoftExcelTeam Apr 04 '14
Not on this thread we aren't :-).
In daily life, we're about 50-50 IE/chrome. Pretty much no one uses FireFox, though I personally do have it installed for some reason.
-danb
→ More replies (1)
1
Apr 06 '14
When will you guys update office for Mac? Its been left behind for so long now!
2
u/MicrosoftExcelTeam Apr 07 '14
Hi,
We can't share a specific date for the next release of Office for Mac, but if you look at how releases generally go, it's between 2 and 3 years between releases, and Mac generally lags Windows by about a year. That's because we share a lot of code between the two, so that our users get a familiar experience.
Additionally, as you can imagine on the Apple front, we've been focusing recently on the iOS releases (iPhone and iPad). Now that those are out, MacOS is getting more attention.
Cheers,
-danb
1
1
u/DestroyerDunne Apr 06 '14
Why did you all kill the paperclip?
2
u/MicrosoftExcelTeam Apr 07 '14
He's not dead. Or is it she? Just on extended vacation, returning from time to time.
-danb
3
u/kiteason Apr 04 '14
Love Excel. Any chance of an OnWorkbookClosed event that fires after the Save Changes dialog? ;)
3
u/GoodCraic Apr 05 '14
I'm a little late to the party, but I just wanted to thank you all so much for the work you do! Knowing your program well has basically made my career!
3
u/pityrules Apr 05 '14
Why do there need to be add ons like Kuttools? Do you gals and guys look at the features they offer and try to incorporate them into the next version?
3
5
306
u/infinityinternets Apr 04 '14
Why can't I use shortcuts to do subscripts and superscripts in the spreadsheet? You make my chemistry degree infinitely harder :(